Moulin Rouge
by papertrails
Summary: The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. Even in the dark underworld of Chicago, in the nightclub The Moulin Rouge, love can flower and bloom. A tale of treachery, betrayal, and love.


AN: Yes…I'm embarrassed. Very. The fact that I'm writing an AU based off of the Moulin Rouge, of all films, just seems awkward but what can I say? Listening to "One Song Glory" from Rent and (oddly enough) thought of Moulin Rouge and the quote below. All I can say is that I found myself inspired enough to whip this up when I should have been studying. Just something about the quote itself, the beautiful songs from the film….Don't worry, it's not going to follow the film plot, just its premise, since I actually haven't watched the movie enough times to know its plot that well. So it's less of a Moulin Rouge remake with Gravitation characters more than that I just wanted to capture the essence of the film (the dark, edgy, but wonderfully vibrant vibe) in my own story. And I was inspired by the quote. :) Feedback greatly appreciated.

**The Moulin Rouge **

Prologue: The Red Windmill

_Dawn creeps languidly through the pane-less windows of the small, bare apartment room. It's humid; summer's heat has recently monopolized the entire town and even in the earliest hours of the day, there is no escape from the wretched fever of summer. Outside, the sky is a haze of mottled blues and deep grays. _

_The clicks and clacks of an antiquated typewriter, bought second-hand, resonate in the still of the room from where a lone figure works at a oaken table. Long, elegant hands at the bow of the machine. A pair of spectacles sit on the bridge of a nose, shielding eyes of molten amber. _

_In the bed beside the desk, rumpled hair the color of carnival cotton candy peeks from beneath rumpled sheets, flashes of pale, delectable skin. The lullaby of breathing, soft and slow sleep, intertwined with the mechanical noise emitted from the typewriter. _

_Memories stir. _

_The echoes of a voice ringing, all gold and passion, from the harshly lit stage. _

_Tendrils of smoke drifting upward from a cigarette, navigating their way to the sky. _

_Bright lights. Dark corners. Music, loud and pumping. The flutter of eyelashes and a kiss under neon lights._

_Gunshot, the cold metal barrel. Velvet roses dying on an empty stage. _

_Like this, the story unfolds… _

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**'The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love...and be loved in return."**

-Moulin Rouge

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The Moulin Rouge…The red windmill…Styled after that infamous bordello in Paris, from which it had blatantly, _shamelessly_, stolen its name. The Moulin Rouge of Paris--only ashes and burnt rubble now, I hear--had been a nighttime carnival of dark fantasies, hidden wonders. An underground playground, where rich (and damn pathetic, I might add) men flocked to find delight amongst the lithe bodies, sweet flesh, and candied performances of beautiful, young women. Carefully choreographed dances, with flashes of dainty skin, flamboyant but feminine performances enough to stir any perverted old geezer up into a frenzy. An auction of sorts, where women could be sold to the highest bidder. Sold, like everyday commodities. The sort of thing I despise the most, hypocrite that I am. But the Paris Moulin Rouge is only the original, not the duplicate to which I refer. It is not _my _Moulin Rouge.

_My _Moulin Rouge. Built almost an entire century after its Paris precedent. Located behind the inky smoke and mirrors of the Chicago slums, it was the Paris Moulin Rouge, but without any attempts at fantasy and twisted romance (the only sort of romance that can exist, after all, when bought with a few crumpled bills, a handful of coins). Walking down the streets, you wouldn't have noticed it, camouflaged subtly as it was among the other night clubs, strip joints. I nearly missed it my first time around the area (and god, how I sometimes wish I had, just walked right fucking past the damn place). You would have noticed, instead, the garish lights that lit the dark and narrow streets, the garbage littering the gutters, the dark penetrating to every corner and surface. You would have been half disgusted, half allured (as I was) by the promises offered by the dark and grime. The prospect of unbridled pleasure, fluorescent lights and sweat drying in the humid air heated by the erratic motion of bodies. You wouldn't have seen it, the Moulin Rouge, where it stood diminutive and almost modest between a nightclub and a bar. A dingy building that only half-heartedly attempted to imitate the grandeur of the Paris model, with a red windmill (the trademark of the Moulin Rouge) painted on the sign hanging over the door and adorned with gaudy flashing bulbs in the old cabaret style. Quite pathetic, really. Not my kind of thing, though it's pretty damn fucking ironic that I should be saying that now. This Moulin Rouge. _My _Moulin Rouge. It was no dark paradise; there were no complex illusions, no secret magic, to be uncovered within. One would think that the grand idiot who had established the place would have had the sense to explore such possibilities (he had, after all, named it after _the _Moulin Rouge, which was _only_ famous for the midnight magic it exuded), but he obviously had lacked either the creativity or initiative to do so. It was all its exterior promised: a gritty, dark little shithole where one could come to satisfy his one night desires, get drunk and dirty. God knows how I ended up in that hellhole that one December night.

Some might call it fate, destiny. What sort of idiot believes in that kind of shit? A load of bull. Sometimes, I refer to it as the biggest fucking mistake I ever made in my life (though I will admit, grudgingly, that my words are unnecessarily harsh. I exaggerate. Things…have not all been bad).

It was here that my life, which I had always considered a rather fucking shitty excuse for a life, came to be changed in ways irrevocable. Yeah, sounds dramatic doesn't it? Well what do you expect from a damn novelist? It's in my blood to stretch events out of proportions. I'm being rather uncharacteristic here, all too fucking wordy for my taste, but I have a motto (no, actually, I don't, never had) that if you decide to tell a story, you better damn tell it all. Tell it well. Tell the facts. Yes, I'll admit: my sad excuse of a life changed the moment I stepped into that building. Irreversibly. Like one of those goddamn harlequin novels, except I was a completely unwilling participant. My way has always been the way of apathy. I dislike involvement in the world beyond that which is absolutely necessary. But this irrevocable change-- for good or bad? Most days, I'd go with the latter.

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People these days seem to have adopted the habit of appending labels on everyone and everything around them. It's goddamn unnecessary and annoying. I myself have been labeled cynical, bitter, jaded, the entirety of my life. Well fuck. It's true. I'm the biggest damn cynic, the biggest critic that I know. I'm an amalgam of vices. A selfish, apathetic, stoic, cruel misanthrope. It doesn't bother me, either, the way it seems to unnerve the majority of people. Seems to get their panties all in a bunch. The world can go to hell before I start viewing things from behind rose-colored glasses. Simply, I am a pessimist at heart. Will probably die one. Ha. I suppose I'm morbid as well. Not that it fucking matters. At any rate, it should be considered a privilege that here I am, voluntarily and uncharacteristically revealing the contents of my mind. A once in a lifetime opportunity to examine the brain contents of the enigma known to most as Eiri Yuki.

With that in mind, would it surprise you to discover that my chosen profession is that of a romance novelist? Romance, yes, of all genres to write. Me. A romance novelist. Writer of all things appealing to womankind, of all that pertaining to roses and clandestine love. Of all that forbidden yet _irresistible_. Ha. The path my life has chosen to take has never failed to amuse me. Funny, it never fails to anger my father either.

Yes, a romance novelist. And damn good at what I do too, I should say. Good enough to rouse thousands of housewives bordering on menopause, thousands of lust-ridden adolescent girls to the stores ripping cash from their pockets to buy my books. It's a matter of analyzing and identifying what the audience wants to read, what they want to _experience_, and deliver according to their desires. Not everyone can do this. It's a careful balance between innovation and meeting expectations. Too much innovation in the wrong direction drives the audience away; not enough innovation and creativity labels your work banal, cliché. You have to work cold, a machine.

There was a time when I didn't understand the subtle laws of writing romance (hard as it might be to believe). A time when I was…Fucking embarrassing to say, but a _struggling writer. _

God. Why am I doing this again? Typing out some sort of fucking memoir? I can't begin to describe how uncharacteristic this is. I despise journals. I scorn diaries. Diaries and journals are the possessions of self-absorbed pre-pubescent girls or eccentric old men who feel the need to record their memories before croaking. So what the fuck am I doing? I've never planned on making a spectacle out of my life, writing something even remotely close to a damn memoir. Too late, I suppose. I've already started. Goddamn heat's probably frying my brain, the cause of my aberrant behavior. But fuck. The idiot's still asleep and I don't have anything better to do. I'm going to damn well regret this, I already know.

But this is how it started. How it starts. And how incredibly fucking _cliché_. I would be ashamed of myself for writing this if it weren't based on reality. A struggling writer, a grimy nightclub with an undeserved name, stolen from a once famous Paris bordello. And within this building, this red windmill, the event that completely turned my life upside down. That night, when I heard that voice, the one that continues to haunt me. The _someone _who completely overturned my life, though I hate giving him so much credit. It inflates his ego, as if he needs any more of that.

You want to know how the story continues?

This, _this_ is how it began.

_The dimly lit stage. The fluorescent lights. The lone figure on stage. The voice of an angel falling from between rosy lips. And amidst the darkness, golden eyes ensnared by the song of the Moulin Rouge._


End file.
